Ankica Čakardić

University of Zagreb

Family Abolition and Dead Labour: Hegel and Marxist-Feminism

18 February 2025, 17h00 (Lisbon Time — GMT+0)

Sala Mattos Romão (Room C201.J – Department of Philosophy)

School of Arts and Humanities – University of Lisbon

Abstract

The Croatian philosopher and Marxist-humanist associated with the Yugoslav Praxis School, Blaženka Despot, wrote in one of her essays: “With Hegel’s philosophy, with his intervention on freedom, he becomes a necessary starting point for the foundation of a certain Marxist-feminism”. In this lecture, I will attempt to develop a Marxist-feminist reading of Hegel through the lens of social reproduction theory by tracing some of Despot’s Marxist-feminist ideas. Social Reproduction Theory (SRT) is all about life-making. Its core tenet is the fact that the accumulation of surplus value under capitalism is not possible without informal, dead and unpaid domestic labour that generates healthy labour power. SRT traces the “hidden” processes that enable production possible, looks closely “behind the scenes”, at family relations and marriage, and attempts to examine the phenomena of life-making and the produced gender reality. In Hegelian sense, it focuses on Ethical life in its totality, taking into account both the capitalist system of needs and the state as well as the backstage of these visible social relations, i.e. the nuclear family. In Hegel’s writings we are confronted not only simply and naturally with the problem of the family and patriarchy, but also with the presentation of the fact that they constitute the very basis of the reproduction of capitalist society. In order to solve this Hegelian problem in Marxist-feminist terms and to stake out the terrain for the actualised freedom and emancipation of women, we must tackle this goal in its totality, on the long term. In this context, the anti-capitalist solutions include not only the abolition of private property, but also the abolition of the monogamous nuclear family.